


Five Things Rodney McKay Learns About John Sheppard Whilst Naked

by catwalksalone



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Character Study, Established Relationship, M/M, five things
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-24
Updated: 2009-11-24
Packaged: 2017-10-03 16:08:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19930
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/catwalksalone/pseuds/catwalksalone
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rodney gets to know John better.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five Things Rodney McKay Learns About John Sheppard Whilst Naked

**Author's Note:**

> Written March, 2008. **airinshaw** played audience and gave me two thumbs up. Thanks for that! No spoilers.

1.

John is hairy. Anyplace there could conceivably be hair, there hair is. Except this one patch on the outside of John's left shin. It's not big – about two inches by one – and John won't say how he came by it. Rodney is convinced it's from a freak waxing incident during John's so clearly misspent youth. Rodney likes to run his thumb over and over the surprising smoothness of it, finds himself doing it at the strangest times. When John's legs are wrapped around his ears, for example, and really Rodney should be paying more attention to figuring out the perfect relationship between John's pleasure, his own, the ability to keep going as long as is humanly possible for someone of his advancing years and the probability of him going into hypoglycaemic shock and dying if his pre-sex caloric intake isn't matched precisely to energy expenditure. Or, maybe, possibly, maybe that he is here, buried deep inside this man who has inexplicably allowed him into his life and his bed and if anything is going to get Rodney McKay to believe in miracles and a benevolent God then that is definitely it.

But even genius scientists sometimes lose focus on the bigger picture and Rodney finds his thoughts narrowed down to the simple movement of his thumb against this tiny patch of skin. This unexpected small softness that's hidden away and unexplained and it takes Rodney longer that it should (although given his EQ is only slightly higher than that of a house-trained primate perhaps just exactly the right amount of time) to figure out that what he's doing is getting as close to touching the _Johnness_ of John as he can. Rodney doesn't like the nebulousness of the concept of Johnness, he feels more comfortable with the solid physical presence of John's random leg baldness. He's happy to substitute one for the other.

2.

John's life is mapped out in scars. It's not that there are hundreds of them, not even dozens, but they are there, scattered across his body, reminders of times when John did not die. They are all shapes and sizes and their colours speak of history: silvery-white interruptions of tanned skin or the purpled darkness of ageing or the pale, rosy, healthy pink of healing or dead-red dotted lines, perforated borders not letting John come apart.

Rodney demands to know the stories and John tells them, voice low and sleep-sweet. He draws Rodney's hand to the crescent moon just below his right knee and says "When I was four..." As he speaks Rodney traces each scar and grows up with John, with every story, skateboards and escaping cars and drunken ambushing bushes (Rodney makes the assumption that it was John that was drunk rather than the evil rose bush in question) and near death and near death and, dear god, some near death thrown in.

The stories aren't long, John isn't one for embellishments, and Rodney finds himself filling in the details for himself, his imagined young John just a miniature version of this one, only more clothed and not so much into having gay sex with a man old enough to be his father. The same improbable hair, though, and the same slow smile, barely absent from his face as he wipes out, crashing into the school steps. Rodney thinks that John had probably dripped blood all the way along the hall to his homeroom before he'd admitted that yes, perhaps a Band-Aid was required.

Stupid stoic bastard, he thinks and pushes John who says "Hey!" all aggrieved and Rodney remembers that he has enough real life experiences of John's idiotic I'm OK behaviour to justify any amount of pushing so he doesn't feel guilty for inventing more and says "Yes," and "Well," and "Don't get more," because it's the closest he can come and John says "Rodney," drawing Rodney down to him with long, long syllables and Rodney is grateful for the vowels and for John's mouth and for the way John's body just keeps fixing itself.

3.

John loves being scratched. Stands to reason, all that hair, Rodney knows how itchy wool is next to the skin, there aren't _words_ for the hives it gives him. But John, he practically purrs when Rodney's fingers press lightly on John's chest, fingernails scraping subtly. He almost _vibrates_ when Rodney ups the pressure, scoring red lines across skin. Rodney is nothing if not thorough and John looks like he's been parboiled before Rodney's done and where John is limp with pleasure, John's cock most certainly is not.

And when Rodney scratches John's balls, hot and heavy in his hand, and John's eyes fly open, Rodney swears that one day John is going to come just from this. Just from the sheer relief. Then he takes John's cock in his mouth and barely, just barely, scrapes the shaft with his teeth and John comes and comes and Rodney swallows and digs his fingernails into John's hips and John never says "too hard."

4.

John's toes are ridiculously long and almost prehensile. When Rodney hadn't been suitably impressed by John's ability to pick up a pen from the floor with his foot and manipulate it to draw a tic tac toe board on Rodney's abdomen he'd drawled "Just think of what else these toes can do, McKay," and drawn an arrow from Rodney's navel to where Rodney's penis lay nestled in his pubic hair. Rodney's eyes had widened and he had grabbed the pen from between John's toes, flinging it across the room, at half-mast before John had even laid a toe on him.

John had laughed, long and hard and then shown Rodney exactly what his weird, too clever feet could do.

And to think Rodney had thought coming to Atlantis was the strangest thing that was ever going to happen to him.

5.

Rodney knows that he's a disgrace to the gay community, that he should be all about the big, hard cock, red and angry and _wanting_ and he is, god, really, he is, no one's taking away his rainbow badge, it's just that there's something incredibly endearing about John's dick when it's at rest, so to speak. When it's tired or spent or simply taking some time out from their busy schedule of crisis-lurching and hot sex. He likes how it looks, pale but hyper-real against the dark twists of John's pubic hair, curled to one side as if it's sleeping – a sentient creature in its own right. Rodney never says this out loud, of course, he's not an idiot.

He likes the way it feels, too, skin slidy velvet-soft, elastic and giving. Doesn't stay that way for long when he touches it, though, so he rations it out, finger and thumb encircling and holding in a light grip, letting the weight of it rest in his palm.

But the thing he loves most about it is that John lets him see it. No, not even that, because that would indicate conscious thought and Rodney doesn't think it's ever crossed John's mind that it's a decision that can be made and unmade. John trusts him and that's the simple, extraordinary truth. John is happy to have his soft, dangly, ugly-beautiful, _vulnerable_ (oh, how vulnerable) man parts out on full display in front of Rodney knowing he's got nothing to hide and nothing to fear. Rodney's not all the way there yet, himself – he still hides beneath sheets, slips out of bed in the dark to pee – but John's leading by example again, and this time Rodney's happy to follow.


End file.
